On 05/06/2015 11:34 AM, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: > On Tue May 05, 2015 at 20:45:09 +0200, Ansgar Burchardt wrote: >> * Packages currently at "important": >> - cron: >> Not needed in chroot/container environments. >> -> demote to "standard" > > RC. > > | important > | Important programs, including those which one would expect to find on > | any Unix-like system. If the expectation is that an experienced Unix > | person who found it missing would say "What on earth is going on, where > | is foo?", it must be an important package.[6] Other packages without > | which the system will not run well or be usable must also have priority > | important. This does not include Emacs, the X Window System, TeX or any > | other large applications. The important packages are just a bare minimum > | of commonly-expected and necessary tools. > > cron is part of POSIX.
The problem here is what the expectations of an experienced UNIX person are... I hopefully count as having some experience, but I don't expect cron to be available everywhere (unlike say awk); I would still expect it to be part of a "reasonably small but not too limited character-mode system" (that is "standard" priority). Note that I believe this has changed over time: with the advent of VMs and containers the expectations what a system should minimally provide have become smaller. I'll not comment on where I see emacs and vim ;) > http://www.unix.com/apropos-man/posix/1/cron/ Note that this also includes the following requirement: | If standard output and standard error are not redirected by commands | executed from the crontab entry, any generated output or errors shall | be mailed, via an implementation-defined method, to the user. That requires something to deliver mail. However I really don't think we want a MTA to be at "important" priority. > So either we fix the policy or cron needs to stay in 'important'. "at", "m4", "mailx", ... are also not at "important", though required by POSIX. But as admitted earlier, I am not totally sure about "cron". Maybe we should keep it at "important" at least for stretch and revisit it in the buster cycle; not sure yet. Ansgar -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-boot-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/5549eb1a.6020...@debian.org
